A female farmer goes into the mountains to make a living, seeking a future in a bowl of rice

A-Bao, author of "A Female Farmer's Chronicle of Tending the Mountain," went on to rent a high-mountain orchard, living for a whole year in a tent without electricity, farming hard by day and lighting an oil lamp at night, learning agriculture through hands-on practice and cultivating the land in a way that treats it kindly, hoping to ultimately fulfill the dream of planting trees and restoring forest. After that, A-Bao turned her energy to "Seeking a Future in the Bowl," launched over the past year or two, hoping to promote the integration of campus nutritional lunches with friendly farming and local production for local consumption, achieving a sustainable win-win situation for children's health and local small farmers.

Last year (2010), the Education Department of the Yilan County Government promoted the use of local ingredients in school lunches, securing an NT$8 million subsidy from the Ministry of Education, encouraging schools to cooperate with communities in growing vegetables, and encouraging schools to purchase ingredients for nutritional lunches from local small farmers. After proposals and evaluations from each school, a total of 19 elementary and junior high schools in Yilan County participated in this project. A-Bao's "Friendly Farming Small Farmers Alliance" was invited to serve as a consultant for this project.

The content of the selected schools was very diverse, for example: Datong Junior High School was to plant millet, the staple food of indigenous peoples; Yueming Elementary School was to raise cows and sheep to help mow the playground; Xiaowei Elementary School was to grow white garlic, combined with the specialty duck delicacy of Wujie Township; Wenhua Junior High School was to grow rice and make rice cakes, mi tai mu (rice noodles), and tangyuan after harvest; Cixin Waldorf Primary and Secondary School already had the Dazhaiyuan market and now wanted to raise ducks and chickens in the aquatic pond, and also hoped to rent nearby fallow farmland to grow rice; Zhongxing Elementary School was to grow herb plants.

A-Bao said this was the first time at the county or city level that a public sector body was willing to try promoting the integration of campus nutritional lunches with local agriculture, and it deserved encouragement and recognition. However, during the operational process, many challenges and problems were encountered, resulting in the ideal not truly being implemented. To give readers a deeper understanding, upstream and downstream reporter Wang Wen-Hao conducted a special interview with A-Bao to discuss the problems faced in promoting the integration of campus nutritional lunches with local agriculture, hoping to promote the healthy development of integrating nutritional lunches with local agriculture.

The following is A-Bao's first-person account:

Two years ago I taught a class at Yilan Community University, and at the end of the term I took students to do civic participation, holding a forum to discuss the development of local agriculture. At the time there were two aspects, namely how school nutritional lunches and corporate lunches could be integrated with local agriculture. Those attending included people from the business sector, teachers, principals, and lunch contractors. Unfortunately, no educational unit was invited, especially officials from the Education Department.

But after former Education Department director Chen Deng-Qin took office, he invited our "Friendly Farming Small Farmers Alliance" to serve as consultants. I looked at the Education Department's plan and found that its content was consistent with the conclusions of our seminar at the time, that is, starting from campus nutritional lunches to promote green campuses, campus farming, and so on. As for the part involving community integration, it was hoped that schools would find nearby farms in the community for contract farming as ingredients for nutritional lunches.

But it was a bit unfortunate that during the promotion process, the public body never discussed it with us; the plan had already been drafted and schools were asked to submit proposals and ideas. Schools did not fully understand concepts such as local production for local consumption, food education, and organic farming. Many schools may have written proposals just to secure funding, relying on information they collected themselves and their own imagination.

In addition, the Ministry of Education subsidy funds that had already been approved during the summer were not allocated until November of that year, so the schools did not implement contract farming with local farmers. In the end, only the campus farming teams, that is, the item of growing vegetables on campus, was implemented.

Although near the end of the plan, the handling staff of the Yilan County Education Department allocated additional funds to these schools, hoping they could purchase ingredients directly from local farmers, many schools ultimately still handed it over to the nutritional lunch contractors. The contractors found it troublesome, and in the end still purchased from wholesale vegetable production areas. Local production for local consumption ultimately came to nothing.

The Education Department invited our Friendly Farming Small Farmers Alliance to serve as a mentoring team. But in these processes, the mentoring team was completely unable to exert any power, nor could it participate in the process; it was only nominal, just an endorsement.

Some parents told me they felt the quality of campus nutritional lunches was very poor. What is the quality of rice at NT$15 per jin? It must be expired old rice or mixed rice. Low-cost nutritional lunches are certainly not tasty, children do not like to eat them, and in the end it all gets thrown away. So blaming children for being wasteful, actually one should think about the quality of the nutritional lunch.

For example, the cost of nutritional lunches went from NT$27 two years ago to NT$33 this year. The menu content requires three dishes and one soup, two vegetables and one meat, plus rice. How is NT$33 enough? Moreover, this money also includes personnel costs and cooks' wages. In particular, nutritional lunches adopt open bidding, and everyone only haggles over whether the price is cheap, without thinking that the quality of ingredients will be affected.

↑ Integrating nutritional lunches with local small farmers to implement local production for local consumption can also bring employment opportunities to rural populations.

However, because this plan received good reviews from the outside world, the Education Department will continue it next year. Our Friendly Farming Small Farmers Alliance must work hard to turn things around and actively reflect the idea of implementing local production for local consumption in nutritional lunches.

The challenge of promoting nutritional lunch reform

Observing the promotion process last year, we found several problems. First, schools do not understand these issues, and teachers are very unfamiliar with agriculture. In particular, many teachers are very afraid when they hear about this plan, because they are usually already stretched thin busy with special teaching, let alone being unfamiliar with agriculture.

As for parents, only a minority care about the quality of nutritional lunches. Most still think the lower the price the better, and even think that since other counties and cities promote free nutritional lunches, why can't Yilan?

The public service system fears trouble most. Even if we discover problems arising from outsourced contractors, if schools are asked to set up their own kitchens to prepare lunches themselves, most will make excuses and put it off. The central government needs to review the outdated parts of the Government Procurement Act, or directly enact a Basic Act on Food Education like Japan.

Our current thinking is that the public sector should not move too fast. It should first promote seed teaching and training, drive teachers' enthusiasm, and also communicate with parents. Only when parents are aware is it easy to promote.

The contradiction of local production not being locally consumed, and local consumption not being locally produced

I have seen a rather contradictory case, such as a junior high school in Datong Township, Yilan County. Although it has its own kitchen, the ingredients are still entrusted to a vegetable vendor to purchase in Luodong on the plain. Nanshan is a production area for high-cold vegetables! Yet it still has to buy from the plain. Isn't that strange? The school and the community have no interaction at all. Moreover, many parents make a living by growing vegetables themselves. Because the vegetables cannot be sold, they usually struggle bitterly, and yet their children still have to eat other people's vegetables.

At the same time, in order to satisfy the market's preference for vegetables with good appearance, these farmers use large amounts of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and grow separate crops for their own consumption. As a result, their own children still eat vegetables grown elsewhere when they go to school.

Because the nutritional lunch procurement system is bound hand and foot, the human dimension of the whole way of life is cut off. Isn't that strange?

In Dongshan, Yilan, there is also a school whose parents' association places great importance on nutritional lunches. The parents even registered a company to purchase organic ingredients and cook themselves, but their source of procurement is still large distribution channels, such as Yuen Foong Yu or large farms in central and southern Taiwan.

Logically speaking, taking money out of local people's pockets to spend should take care of local farmers, urge them to improve their farming methods, and make the living environment better. But purchasing organic vegetables from outside instead takes care of the environment elsewhere. Isn't that contradictory? This school in Dongshan Township is surrounded by farmland. When farmers spray pesticides, filling the air with mist, the teachers' response is to close the windows, with no other option. Yet the children eat organic meals every day, spending money to buy organic ingredients from elsewhere, but the same money cannot be used to convert the farmland around the school to organic.

↑ Children's future competitiveness starts now, from the bowl of the nutritional lunch.

Wealthy Taiwan, the unmentionable secret of nutritional lunches?

Nutritional lunches are not just about buying and selling; a lot of effort must also be invested in communicating with farmers and promoting local transformation. Later, the school parents' makeshift solution was to rent the farmland near the school and grow it themselves. But this did not actually change farmers' attitudes! We feel very sad. Taiwan is such a wealthy society, so why is it so difficult to spend a few extra dollars to have farmers grow healthy and safe agricultural products? And then why are so many nutritional lunches thrown away?

I know many schools try to change, but cannot break through. Why? Because the procurement interests behind nutritional lunches are too great. If you try to break through, you may face a backlash from established interests. As far as I know, some school nutritionists even receive threatening phone calls. How can schools change under such circumstances?

Recommended reading

Children, is your lunch nutritious? The Future in the Bowl - Special Feature Guide